DESIGN OF A LOW SIDELOBE 4D PLANAR ARRAY INCLUDING MUTUAL COUPLING

An e-cient approach is presented for the design of a low sidelobe four-dimensional (4D) planar antenna array, taking into account mutual coupling and platform efiect. The approach is based on the combination of the active element patterns and the difierential evolution (DE) algorithm. Difierent from linear and circular arrays, the mutual coupling compensation in a planar array is more complicated since it requires numerous data of the active element patterns in difierent azimuth planes. In order to solve this problem, a useful interface program is developed to get these data from commercial software HFSS automatically. Also difierent from conventional low sidelobe arrays with tapered amplitude excitations, the low sidelobe in the 4D array is realized using time-modulation technique under uniform static amplitude and phase conditions. The DE algorithm is used to optimize the time sequences which are equivalent to the complex excitations in conventional arrays. Both computed results and simulated results in HFSS show that a i30dB sidelobe pattern can be synthesized in a 76-element planar array with an octagonal ground plane and a radome, thus verifying the proposed approach.

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